Big Juan: Slot Overview
Load up your pistols, y'all, with a bit of imagination,
Pragmatic Play partner Wild Streak Gaming is 🌝 transporting players to Mexico for a spot
of gambling. Wild Streak is a studio that certainly likes respin bonus features, 🌝 and
yes, one appears in Big Juan as its centrepiece. Fair dues, though, it behaves a bit
differently than these 🌝 bonus games usually do. Here, players respin in the hopes of
landing four jackpot prizes, none of which are earth-shatteringly 🌝 exciting.
Studios
that go the Mexican route basically have free reign to go as bright and noisy as they
like. This 🌝 Wild Streak has done, yet Big Juan feels like a budget knockoff rather than
a respectful piece of cultural appropriation. 🌝 Okay, it's not Mexican as such but
compare Big Juan to ELK's tastefully designed Wild Toro 2 - the latter 🌝 is light years
away from this rambunctious fiesta. Big Juan is lively, however, and maybe some players
enjoy losing themselves 🌝 in the chaos. Juan does plenty of pistol shooting when he's not
strumming furiously on his guitarrón Mexicano, and the 🌝 soundtrack has spirit, yet
everything ends up being a tad tourist shop gaudy as much as anything else.
The game is
🌝 split between two phases – a base game and a respin bonus round. The base game is
played on 5-reel, 🌝 4-row matrix providing 40 fixed paylines to hit winning combinations
across. This shrinks to a smaller area when the bonus 🌝 triggers, as we'll see. Highly
volatile, Big Juan's math model produces a default theoretical return value of 96.7%
when playing 🌝 normally, strangely dropping to 96.53% when buying the bonus for some
reason. Bet range is vast, though it could have 🌝 been more accommodating fore players
looking to stretch a bankroll, starting at 40 p/c per spin, rising toR$/€200 at the
🌝 upper end.
At least three identical symbols on a payline from the left side of the grid
are needed to form 🌝 a winning combination. This can be done with five low pay 10-A
symbols or higher-paying guitars, hot sauce bottles, chihuahuas, 🌝 señoritas, or Big Juan
señors. Values for a five of a kind premium combination are 2.5 to 6.25 times the
🌝 stake. Look out for the wild chilli symbols which are worth double the top high pay
symbol and land anywhere 🌝 to substitute all other paying symbols.
Big Juan: Slot
Features
Two features appear in Big Juan. These are the Wild Switch in 🌝 the base game
and the triggered Respins bonus round.
Wild Switch Feature
In the base game, whenever
at least 6 of the 🌝 same pay symbols hit on reels 2, 3, or 4, they all transform into
chilli wild symbols.
Respins Feature
Landing 3, 4, 🌝 or 5 pinata scatter symbols awards
10, 12, or 15 respins respectively. For the respin feature, the game is played 🌝 on a 3x3
sized grid, with a special 4th reel which has just one position. On the main grid, a
🌝 sticky bag of coins symbol sits in the middle position, while other positions may land
money symbols, extra spins symbols, 🌝 or one of the four jackpot symbols.
On the 4th
reel, if a Win symbol hits, the value of all money 🌝 symbols in view and the bag of coins
symbol is awarded. If any jackpot symbols are in view, they are 🌝 collected on their
respective jackpot meter. Collect enough jackpot symbols, and the prize is awarded. The
four jackpots are the 🌝 Mini, Minor, Major, and Grand, which are worth 12.5x, 50x, 250x,
or 2,500x the total bet.
The other symbol that may 🌝 land on the 4th reel is the Boost
symbol. When this one hits, the values of any money symbols in 🌝 view are added to the
bag of coins symbol. This value remains in place until the end of the round.
Buy
🌝 Bonus
Players who would like to skip the base game and go straight to respins can do so
by buying the 🌝 feature. The cost is 100x the total bet for 4 or 5 bonus symbols to
trigger it.
Big Juan: Slot Verdict
It 🌝 didn't take long for Big Juan's initial explosion
of sights and sounds to wear off and reveal an average game 🌝 lurking beneath. To be
fair, even the sights weren't up to much from the get-go. Wild Streak has a tendency 🌝 to
create old looking games; whether this is on purpose or not isn't clear. Whatever the
case, Big Juan has 🌝 an instantly dated appearance. What saves Big Juan, for a while at
least, is the relentless Mariachi Band, singing away 🌝 and letting rip with other
entertaining miscellaneous sound effects. To be fair, one of the reasons studios
possibly pick this 🌝 theme is that a party atmosphere comes built-in, so half the job's
done.
Too bad Wild Streak couldn't capitalise on the 🌝 party aspect, though and after a
while, even the positivity induced by the music evaporated as tedium set in. The 🌝 Wild
Switch feature isn't bad, a similar thing having been used before in Temujin Treasures.
It occasionally triggered to build 🌝 a decent win. In fact, the Wild Streak feature often
tended to outdo the Respins Feature when it came to 🌝 payout levels.
Wild Streak Gaming
is certainly a strong proponent of respin features, starring in a big number of their
games. 🌝 If you're into these sorts of things and crave something a bit new, Big Juan
might warrant a look. Its 🌝 alternative set of rules means it performs differently than
respin games usually do. Coin wins keep the bonus going while 🌝 collecting tokens to
trigger one a jackpot provides a mission. The jackpots aren't huge, but winning the
grand might evoke 🌝 the desire to fire off a pop gun or two. At full stretch, winning
potential in Big Juan is limited 🌝 to 2,600x the bet, possibly reflecting the high max
bet.
In the end, once our foot stopped tapping to the beat, 🌝 the game turned out to be
more Big Yawn than Big Juan. The unusual respin bonus might tempt fans of 🌝 the format
who have seen it all. Other than that, there are more accomplished slots to get a
Mariachi fix.
